Synopsis
When Barack Obama learns of the death of his African father, whom he hardly knew, he is compelled to trace his unusual family history. Obama, who became a nationally known figure in 2004 when he gave the keynote address at the Democratic Convention, writes movingly about being raised in Hawaii by his white mother. He goes on to describe his years at Harvard (where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review), his illuminating visit to family members in Kenya, and his work as a community activist in Chicago, where he eventually entered Illinois politics.
When Barack Obama learns of the death of his African father, whom he hardly knew, he is compelled to trace his unusual family history. Obama, who became a nationally known figure in 2004 when he gave the keynote address at the Democratic Convention, writes movingly about being raised in Hawaii by his white mother. He goes on to describe his years at Harvard (where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review), his illuminating visit to family members in Kenya, and his work as a community activist in Chicago, where he eventually entered Illinois politics. While the book ends there, the rest is history. On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as President of the United States of America.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1995-08-01 |
| Size | | Height: | 9.5 in | | Width: | 6.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.8 in | | Weight: | 28.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
Barack Obama opens his story in New York, where he hears that his father - a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man - has died in a car accident. The news triggers a chain of memories, as Barack retraces his family's unusual history: the migration of his mother's family from small-town Kansas to the exotic, dreamlike islands of Hawaii; the love that develops between his mother and a promising young Kenyan student, a love nurtured by youthful innocence and the integrationist spirit of the early sixties; his father's departure from Hawaii when Barack is only two, as the realities of race and power reassert themselves; and Barack's own painful awakening to the fears and doubts that exist not just between the larger black and white worlds but within himself.
Obama, the son of a white American mother and a black African father, writes an elegant and compelling biography that powerfully articulates America's racial battleground and tells of his search for his place in black America. 8 pages of photos.
Industry Reviews
"Barack Obama is never flip or hip. Fluidly, calmly, insightfully, he guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, family, class and race."
Washington Post Book World - Paul Ruffins (08/20/1995)
"One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I've ever read. Paced like a good novel."
press materials - Charlayne Hunter-Gault
"An exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author's journey into adulthood. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white."
press materials - Marian Wright Edelman
"All men live in the shadow of their fathers--the more distant the father, the deeper the shadow. Barack Obama describes his confrontation with this shadow in his provocative autobiography. DREAMS FROM MY FATHER, and he also persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither."
New York Times Book Review - Paul Watkins (08/06/1995)
"In DREAMS FROM MY FATHER Barack Obama takes us on a probing journey in a search for the truths about family and race. Obama's writing is incisive and yet forgiving. It's a book worth savoring."
Alex Kotlowitz
"We learn in Barack Obama's soaring book that survival demands resilience in the face of frustrated expectations, and that one's committed opposition to America's obsession with color cultivates a vision of life that is nourished by struggle."
press materials - Derrick Bell
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Hardback Edition of Obama's Autobiography
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